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RHYME. 17 I
erally, if not always, used to signify the hair of a female head. They would make an incongruous appearance in the head-dress of a reverend old man, but they are here put for hair of the head in general, which is a misuse of the word. Milton had occasion to use this word when describing Adam and Eve in Paradise; and he marks, by many distinguishing circumstances, the wide difference between the male and female head of hair in those whom he represents as perfect models of human beauty.
His hyacinthine locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clustering, but not beneath his shoulders broad : She, as a veil, down to the slender waist, Her unadorned golden tresses wore Dishevell'd, but in wanton ringlets waved, As the vine curls her tendrils.
Besides these faults it has been reckoned another to make the great majority of rhymes with monosyllables. Goldsmith has been censured for this, and Gray, in his remarks on the poems of Lydgate, says : " We (the English) are almost reduced to find our rhymes among the monosyllables, in which our tongue too much abounds. In Pope's Ethic epistles (that to Lord Burlington), I find, in the compass of forty lines, only seven words at the end of a verse which are not monosyllables. That it is undesirable to rhyme with such monosyllables as are trifling and insignificant words, is acknowledged, as has been already observed; but to object to monosyllables for rhymes, merely |
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